Chairman of the crisis-hit carrier, Vijay Mallya, admitted the salaries had been “seriously overdue”, but that the problem had arisen in the first place because the Indian tax authorities had frozen the company’s accounts.

Airline staff had previously written an open letter to Mallya, in it they said that they would stop reporting for duty if the situation wasn’t resolved soon. They also said that they could not give thier full attention to their work during this time due to the financial stress, and that this may lead to it being unsafe for passengers using KingFisher.

Kingfisher has been in financial trouble for some time. At one stage it was India’s largest airline by passenger numbers, but is now weathering money troubles, losing on average $1m (£628,000) per day….